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(Our puti(;m .fathers our dilorn 



SERMON 



BED IN 



COMMEMORATION OF THE 220TH ANNIVERSARY 






FIRST CHURCH IX ClTARLESTOWN, MASS. 



Sunday, November 14, 1852. 




BY WILLIAM I. BUDINGTON, 

PASTOR. 



CHARLESTOWN : 
M?KIM & CUTTER, 62, MAIN STREET, 

BOSTON ■ B. II. OE EE 

1:M, Washington Street. 

1852. 



.c 



Charlestown, Nov. 15, 1852. 
Rev. and Dear Sir, 

Having listened with deep interest to your Sermon, commemorative of the two 

hundred and twentieth anniversary of the organization of the church, and feeling 

desirous that the principles and instructions so happily set forth therein should be 

more widely disseminated, we would respectfully request a copy for the press. 



Very sincerely yours, 



To Rev. W. I. Budington. 



H. P. Sweetser. 
James Hunnewell. 
L. A. Huntington. 
Benaiah Webster. 
James H. Goodrich. 



Charlestown, Nov. 18, 1852. 
Gentlemen, 

I thank you for your courtesy in asking a copy of my Sermon for the press, 

and have hesitated only because it was prepared without a thought of publication, 

and seems to me unworthy of it. I accede to your request, however, in the hope 

that, imperfect as it is, it may serve in some humble measure to deepen in our hearts 

the sense of obligation to our Puritan Fathers. 

Respectfully your Friend and Pastor, 

W. I. Budington. 

Messrs. H. P. Sweetser, James Hunnewell, L. A. Huntington, 
Benaiah Webster, James H. Goodrich. 



BOSTON: 
PRINTED BY JOHN WILSON AND SON, SCHOOL-STREET. 



SERMON. 



Prov. xvii. 6. — "The glory of children are their fathers." 



It is natural for children to honor their pa- 
rents. It is the dictate of that affection we 
call natural, because God has fixed it in our 
nature. He has also planted the sentiment 
of reverence in our hearts. We must have 
something to revere ; and, next to God, our 
Father in heaven, we fix our reverence upon 
the " fathers of our flesh." Such is the pre- 
ordained working of our human nature. We 
throw the mantle of charity over a father's 
faults, and refuse to contemplate them ; while, 
if our fathers have been distinguished for 
virtuous and noble deeds, we recount them 
frequently and with growing delight. This 



impulse of the filial heart is especially mani- 
fest among the Chinese, who cany their rever- 
ence for their ancestors so far as to pay them 
religious homage. It is, we are told, the 
stronghold of their superstition : they may 
perhaps be persuaded to forego the worship of 
their idols, but they bow the more reverently 
before the images of their fathers. The reason 
probably is, that this kind of worship finds a 
support, which others do not, in the affection- 
ate and reverential promptings of the heart. 
Just as nature teaches the father to love his 
son, so it prompts the son to honor his father. 
And thus God ordains that " the glory of chil- 
dren shall be their fathers." 

The truth, and not less the power, of this 
principle is seen in the experience of mankind. 
Great Britain, the standard-bearer of modern 
civilization, is not more distinguished by influ- 
ence among the nations of the earth, than by 
reverence for the history and institutions of a 
glorious ancestry. While France is a sea of 
change, England is a rock of stability; and 
one reason is, that England has a past she 



reveres, and France a past she hates. The 
Romans, undisputed masters of the ancient 
world, built temples to the founders of their 
city, and consecrated the hearths of their dwell- 
ings with their Lares, the deified representa- 
tives of their ancestors. The Jews also, if less 
idolatrously, were not less cordially, attached 
to the memory of their fathers : it is the last 
relic of their nationality, and makes them yet 
a people, "though scattered and peeled." On 
the other hand, a nation without an ancestry 
to reverence, and with no past to take pride 
in, is a nation without a glory, and tending 
fast to dissolution. We see a melancholy ex- 
emplification of this in distracted Mexico, — 
just now, we are told, tottering upon the verge 
of another revolution. 

It is our distinguished privilege to glory in 
an ancestry superior to that of any other peo- 
ple. This is not the language of extravagance 
and self-complacency : it is sober fact, sus- 
tained by undeniable history. No nation ever 
had an origin so virtuous and heroic as ours. 
The fathers of New England are emphatically 



6 

the glory of their children. Greece and Koine 
worked their way up from obscurity ; nay, 
worse, their foundations were laid in crime 
and blood. England emerges from barbarism, 
and her life is mingled for centuries with the 
history of piracy and the misery of subjection 
to foreign conquerors. But New England takes 
her origin from the ripened maturity of Old 
England. She sprang from the patriotism of 
a freedom-loving people, and the religion of a 
reforming church. Her roots strike into all 
that is purest and noblest and best in Eng- 
land, — into her two Universities, Oxford and 
Cambridge ; into the deepest piety of her min- 
istry, and into the liberty-loving spirit of the 
boldest and most uncompromising of her sons. 

Our Puritan Fathers are our glory. 

This it will be my purpose to show, with 
especial reference to our own church. This 
sabbath-morning is the two hundred and 
twentieth anniversary of the first meeting of 
this church as an organized church of Christ. 
I cannot allow it to go by without reminding 



you into whose labors you have entered, and 
what are the principles and obligations resting 
upon you as children of the Puritan Fathers. 
They are your glory ; 

1. In respect to their character. 

Who were the Puritans ? We invite a rigid 
scrutiny into their character as Christians and 
as men. Not that we imagine they were fault- 
less, or that, along with their strongly marked 
virtues, there were not defects equally marked. 
But we maintain, that, tried by the spirit of 
their age, and seen in company with the men 
of their time, they deserve to be placed in the 
forefront of their generation, and to be held in 
everlasting remembrance by their children and 
mankind. 

As men in their relation to society, they were 
deserving of high consideration. They were 
men of property and education and standing. 
No other class of men would have been ade- 
quate to the task of founding a Christian 
Commonwealth in a distant and savage land. 
The amount of money alone spent in the colo- 
nization of New England altogether exceeds 



8 



common belief. It is computed that the pass- 
age of our fathers across the waters, the trans- 
portation of their first small stock of cattle, 
provisions for their sustenance till they could 
procure it from the land, the materials for their 
first cottages, their arms and ammunition, to 
say nothing of what was laid out by each indi- 
vidual and family, — these things alone cost 
nearly a million of dollars.* Several of the 
original patentees were men of handsome for- 
tunes, and all who bore any prominent part 
were possessed of property. Governor Dudley, 
writing home to the Countess of Lincoln, a few 
months after the arrival of Wintkrop's com- 
pany, says : "If any godly men, out of reli- 
gious ends, will come over to help us in the 
good work we are about, I think they cannot 
dispose of themselves nor of their estates more 
to God's glory and the furtherance of their own 
reckoning. But they must not be of the poorer 
sort yet, for divers years ; for we have found by 
experience that they have hindered, not fur- 
thered, the work. And for profane and de- 

* Mather's Magnalia, i. 64. 



9 



bandied persons, their oversight in coming 
hither is wondered at, where they shall find 
nothing to content them. If there be any 
endued with grace, and furnished with means 
to feed themselves and theirs for eighteen 
months, and to build and plant, let them come 
over into our Macedonia, and help us, and not 
spend themselves and their estates in a less 
profitable employment. For others, I conceive 
they are not yet fitted for this business." 

But there were men of learning as well as 
of wealth among the first colonists. The min- 
isters, who were the heart and soul of the 
whole enterprise, were most distinguished for 
learning, eloquence, and zeal. New England 
lias never had men of a higher culture and a 
riper wisdom than the first pastors of her 
churches. They had received the best educa- 
tion which Oxford and Cambridge could give, 
and were eminent as scholars and preachers at 
home, before coming to this land. 

In addition to this, there were among our 
fathers men of such a social standing, that they 
were able, by their influence at court, to obtain 



10 

the royal sanction and charter, without which 
all their sacrifices and toils would have been of 
no avail. There were not only titled gentle- 
men among them, but representatives of several 
noble families, who were disposed, not only to 
favor the Puritan cause, but also to suffer 
with it. 

Now, all these three influences were indis- 
pensably necessary to the colonization of New 
England. Had wealth and learning and social 
standing, or any one of them, been wanting, 
New England, such as it is and has been, could 
never have existed. The colonists brought 
with them, from the first, the costliest and best 
materials for founding a Christian Common- 
wealth. Churches went up side by side with 
their first rude cottages, and next to these rose 
the walls of Harvard College. 

But our fathers were still more distinguished 
as Christians than as men. Possessing, as 
they did, all that was necessary to make life 
comfortable and pleasant at home, they sacri- 
ficed all for Christ's sake and ours. I know 
the enemies of the Puritans have endeavored 



11 



to stigmatize them as precise, rigid, and aus- 
tere formalists. But there never were a 
class of earnest men, tlicre never was a style 
of Christian character, from the first ages 
down, which were not in like manner liable to 
be ridiculed ; and ridicule, confessedly, is no 
test of truth. Notwithstanding all that has 
been said, I believe it capable of the clearest 
demonstration, that the Puritan Fathers of 
Massachusetts united, with a decided mainte- 
nance of their conscientious convictions, a cha- 
rity towards those from whom they differed, as 
singular as it was sweet. The English lan- 
guage throughout does not contain a document 
more beautiful in itself, and more honorable to 
Christianity, than the letter published by Win- 
throp and his companions on leaving England, 
which they entitled their " Humble Request to 
their Brethren in and of the Church of England, 
for the obtaining of their prayers, and the remo- 
val of suspicions and misconstruction of their 
intentions." " We beseech you," they write, 
"by the mercies of the Lord Jesus, to consider 
us as your brethren, standing in very great 



12 



need of your help, and earnestly imploring it. 
And, however your charity may have met with 
some occasion of discouragement through the 
misreport of our intentions, or through the dis- 
affection or indiscretion of some of us, or rather 
amongst us (for we are not of those that dream 
of perfection in this world), yet we desire that 
you would be pleased to take notice of the 
principals and body of our company, as those 
who esteem it our honor to call the Church of 
England, from whence we rise, our dear mother ; 
and cannot part from our native country, where 
she specially resideth, without much sadness of 
heart, and many tears in our eyes ; ever ac- 
knowledging that such hope and part as we 
have obtained in the common salvation, we 
have received in her bosom, and sucked it from 
her breasts. We leave it not, therefore, as 
loathing that milk wherewith we were nour- 
ished there ; but, blessing God for the paren- 
tage and education, — as members of the same 
body, shall always rejoice in her good, and 
unfeignedly grieve for any sorrow that shall 
ever betide her; and, while we have breath, 



13 

sincerely desire and endeavor the continuance 
and abundance of her welfare, with the en- 
largement of her bounds in the kingdom of 
Christ Jesus." They conclude their letter with 
the following touching assurance and promise 
on their part : ""What goodness you shall ex- 
tend to us in this or any other Christian kind- 
ness, we, your brethren in Christ Jesus, shall 
labor to repay in what duty we are or shall be 
able to perform ; promising, so far as God shall 
enable us, to give him no rest on your behalf, 
wishing our heads and hearts were fountains of 
tears for your everlasting welfare, when we 
shall be in our poor cottages in the wilderness, 
overshadowed with the spirit of supplication, 
through the manifold necessities and tribula- 
tions which may not altogether unexpectedly, 
nor we hope unprofitably, befall us." 

With these sweet words of Christian charity, 
shaded by the utmost tenderness and clelicacj^ 
of feeling, our fathers left their brethren and 
their homes for their " poor cottages in the 
wilderness." Now, we ask, is this the lan- 
guage of fanatics ? Is it not rather the 



14 



language of men, who, knowing what Chris- 
tianity is, and maintaining their union with 
Christ the Head, cannot but live in charity 
with their brethren, " endeavoring to keep the 
unity of the spirit in the bond of peace " ? Let 
those who will, malign and ridicule our fathers ; 
but, while their writings survive, they will be 
the glory of their children. 

2. And this, too, not alone in regard to cha- 
racter, but also in respect to their heroic enter- 
prise and endurance. Our fathers are our 
glory, not only as men and Christians, but as 
pilgrims and colonists. 

Let us transport ourselves back in imagina- 
tion two hundred and twenty years. On the 
morning we now commemorate, Nov. 14, 1632, 
our fathers were assembled, for the first time, 
as members of this church.* They met pro- 
bably on the very spot where we are now 
assembled, or in its immediate vicinity, under 
the shadow of a wide-spreading oak, or in the 
" Great House " near by. Let us imagine the 

* See Note A. 



15 

scene which lay in the gray and sombre color- 
ing of autumn, spread out around and before 
them. How impressive the contrast to that 
with which our eyes are familiar ! 

On the right rose the Town, or Harvard Hill, 
a sharp, conical summit, commanding a wide 
look-out upon the harbor and the surrounding 
country. Behind were the shadows of the 
stately forest, only here and there broken in 
upon, and extending back upon the main as 
far as the eye can reach. Before us, where 
Boston now stands, were three shaip hills, 
rising distinctly to view, and giving the name 
of Tri-Mountain to the Peninsula. On the 
right, the ascending smoke marked the spot 
where Blackstone, the first settler, was living 
alone ; and, on the slope of the hill, to the left, 
might be seen a cluster of little cottages, with 
a modest sanctuary of mud walls and thatched 
roof, built together in loving society, around 
the head of what is now State-street ; — and 
this was all that then existed of Boston. Else- 
where, let the eye range where it might, it met 
nothing but woods and waters. Nothing, do I 



16 

say? The red man perhaps might be seen, 
looking stealthily out from behind the trees 
upon these new and strange beginnings, or 
his light canoe occasionally shooting round 
some bend of the river. What a lonely and 
chilly scene must this have been on that 
fourteenth clay of November, 1632, to surround 
the fathers and mothers and little children 
so recently from pleasant homes in England, 
and now gathering, for the worship of God, in 
the borders of an unexplored wilderness ! How 
must their sense of loneliness have been deep- 
ened by the thought that a wide ocean of 
three thousand miles separated them from 
their homes, and the protection of their king ! 
If they looked round for neighborhood and help 
on this continent, how defenceless must their 
condition have seemed ! With the exception of 
similar beginnings at Plymouth, and a few 
trading posts to the eastward, New England 
was a wilderness, untraversed and unknown ; 
and, with exceptions still more inconsiderable, 
from the Spanish settlements of the South to 
those of the French at the North, the whole of 



17 

our country lay in the silence of nature ; her 
coasts unvisited save by the breaking waves, 
and her interior solitudes undisturbed save by 
the cry of the savage. 

Think now of the little band assembled on 
this spot! How sublime their courage and 
their faith ! They had observed Friday as a 
day of fasting and prayer, and organized a 
church of five and thirty members ; and now 
they were assembled to commit their hopes to 
God, and begin the life of a church which has 
come down to us, and will live, we trust, till 
the second coming of Him whose name it 
bears. Look, then, at the heroic enterprise of 
our fathers, in laying the foundations of their 
church on this narrow margin between the 
ocean and the forest, with nothing around them 
but the proofs of their poverty and defence- 
lessness, and nothing above them but the 
watching eye of God! Are not our fathers 
most honorable as pilgrims and as colonists ? 
and are not such fathers, in truth, the glory of 
their children ? 



18 



" Our Pilgrim Fathers sleep, the children too are dead ; 
But, o'er their ashes and their dust, the children's children tread : 
They worship where their fathers knelt, and on yon sacred spot, 
Not time shall e'er those olden days from off their memory blot. 

And now may we to future years our fathers' deeds prolong, — 
As firm as they to hold the right, and always shun the wrong ; 
And on yon spot a temple stand ; and, o'er their honored dust, 
May ages yet to come be told the pilgrim's faith and trust ! " 

3. But, passing from what our fathers did 
in their enterprise and endurance as colonists, 
let us consider the institutions they founded. 

Our Puritan Fathers are our glory, as the 
authors of institutions which have grown with 
the lapse of time, and whose vitality promises 
a still wider and brighter future. They came 
here professedly to establish a Christian Com- 
monwealth, according to principles which 
should be made plain to them from the Word 
of God. They did not profess to know what 
the Providence and the Word of God had in 
store for them. They knew as little as did the 
Israelites, while following their sense of duty 
and the manifest guidance of God. They 
adopted the Bible, as at once their chart and 
their statute-book ; and they believed that it 
would lead them to the establishment of a 



19 

Christian Commonwealth, and change the wil- 
derness into a land of promise. What is the 
issue ? We, their children, entering into the 
inheritance bequeathed to us by our fathers, 
have, at the present day, a free church, whose 
simple constitution rests immediately upon the 
Bible ; a form of government emanating di- 
rectly from the people governed ; and a system 
of universal education by free schools. And 
these three things, a free church, a free go- 
vernment, and a free education, we have 
received directly from the wisdom and self- 
sacrifice of our fathers. They are the natural 
and necessary results of the principles con- 
tended for by the Puritans, and planted by 
them at the cost of fortune and life. 

Search the records of any and every people, 
and tell me the names of the States and their 
founders, whose institutions have, in two cen- 
turies, yielded fruit so abundant and so glo- 
rious. New England, to-day, challenges a 
comparison with the world for the intelligence 
of her sons, the purity of her churches, and 
the freedom of her institutions. Without the 



20 

aid of the State, she has established churches 
within reach of all her people ; and, with no 
other endowments than those of self-imposed 
taxes, she has made the streams of knowledge 
as numerous and accessible as the rivers which 
run through her valleys, and spring out of her 
hills. No people have ever grown more rapidly 
in all the elements of social happiness and 
political power ; nor have any people, accord- 
ing to their means, done more for the cause of 
education, humanity, and religion. And con- 
fessedly such as we are, we have been made by 
our institutions. Our wealth has not been the 
gift of a luxuriant soil, nor our commerce been 
forced upon us as the necessity of navigable 
rivers, floating to the sea a superabundant pro- 
duction. We are emphatically the growth of 
our institutions ; and these are the inheritance 
bequeathed us by our Puritan Fathers. Such 
fathers, founders of such institutions, are indeed 
the glory of their children. 

4. There is another respect in which our 
fathers are our glory ; and this is the influence 



21 



they have had upon these United States, and so 
eventually upon the destiny of this continent. 

Starting, as our Puritan Fathers did, at so 
early a period in the colonization of this coun- 
try, they seem, in the very priority of their 
influence, to have been anointed by God to 
mould the character of our country. It is a 
difficult, and, to some extent, an invidious task 
to distinguish and separate the influence of 
New England from that of her sister colonies. 
Nor is it necessary. The people were kindred 
in character, and their tendencies alike. It is 
readily confessed, however, that the Puritan 
colonies, being of older growth, more compact 
and more homogeneous, took the lead, at first 
in giving liberty, and then in forming constitu- 
tions. Here began the Revolution ; and, with- 
out the sons of the Puritans, it would neither 
have been carried on nor consummated. Here, 
too, were found the germs of our State and 
Federal Constitutions. The churches of New 
England trained the people to the habits and 
spirit of self-government ; and I believe it a 
true genealogy to trace the republicanism of 



22 

our country to New England, and to her reli- 
gious as well as civil institutions. The chil- 
dren of the Pilgrims, now numbered by millions, 
and spread all over this fair land, early began 
to incorporate themselves with the growing life 
of the Middle States. Although New York 
was settled by the Dutch, Pennsylvania by the 
Quakers, Maryland by the Eoman Catholics, 
and Virginia by the English Cavaliers, a broad 
and deep stream of emigration from New Eng- 
land has mingled with all these fountains of 
nationality ; and everywhere, consciously or 
unconsciously, the influence of our fathers has 
been felt. 

We glory in this. It seems to us a great 
and signal honor, that Divine Providence 
should thus have led our fathers, as by a pil- 
lar of cloud and fire, out of their native land, 
to make them here the founders of an em- 
pire, — 

" Time's latest and her best." 

5. Nor is this all. We glory in our fathers, 
in respect to the influence they have had upon 
the world. 



23 

Think what a change has transpired within 
two centuries in England itself, and in the 
public sentiment of mankind, in regard to 
the character and influence of Puritanism. 
When our fathers were feebly and painfully 
laying the foundations of this church, Charles 
the First was sitting securely upon the throne 
of England, bent upon crushing the cause of 
Puritanism, that the royal prerogative might 
the more easily supplant the ancient privi- 
leges of the English people. Hampden was 
in Parliament, vainly opposing the progress 
of arbitrary power. Cromwell, too, was in 
Parliament; or, rather, he had left it now, 
and, in despair, was turning his attention to 
agriculture. The two cousins, Hampden and 
Cromwell, were beginning to lay their plans 
to follow their Puritan brethren to New Eng- 
land. But the king intercepted the execu- 
tion of their design, not less to his own detri- 
ment than that of our fathers. The storm 
was just at hand, which swept England with 
the horrors of civil war, drove the monarch 
from his throne, and left Cromwell alone in the 



24 



chief magistracy of the Commonwealth. The 
second Charles, it is true, was ere long restored 
to his father's throne ; and the superficial ob- 
server might have thought he saw evidence, in 
the contempt felt and expressed for the Puri- 
tans, that now, at last, their place in history 
had been effaced for ever. But "the glorious 
revolution of 1688" proved that the Puritan 
spirit had not died out of England, and that 
the Puritans had not lived in vain. By a well- 
nigh unanimous confession, the praise is now 
awarded to the Puritans of having preserved 
the liberties of England. The character of 
Cromwell, too, is rising out of the mists of ob- 
loquy in which it has been so long enveloped ; 
and the compatriots of Cromwell, on both sides 
of the Atlantic, can no longer be despised. 
Puritanism has become a recognized force in 
history. It stands revealed, in the lapse of 
time, as the fountain of some of the purest 
and best fruits of modern civilization. It has 
blessed the world too much, and too many 
revering children stand up to defend it, to 
make it respectable or safe to assail the mem- 



25 

ory of either English or American Puritans. 
So much is modern society beholden to Puri- 
tanism, that the political economist has been 
forced to take it into account. It is an in- 
structive and pleasing fact, that, in a recent 
work upon this science by John Stuart Mill, 
— a work of standard authority, and in advance 
of all others, — the history of Puritanism is 
referred to as having modified the industrial 
habits and productive wealth of the people.* 
But time forbids us to dwell longer upon this 
subject. "We glory in our fathers for the place 
they occupy in history, and the influences for 
good they have mingled in the stream of hu- 
man affairs. 

Our Puritan Fathers are our glory, in respect 
to their character as men and as Christians ; 
in respect to their deeds as pilgrims and colo- 
nists; the institutions they founded, and be- 
queathed to us ; the influence they have had 
upon American character ; and, finally, the im- 
press they have made upon history and the 
welfare of mankind. 

* Vol. i. 211. 
4 



26 

I will bring my discourse to a close, by de- 
riving from it a single lesson in regard to the 
filial affection and duty we owe this ancient 
church. 

Brethren and friends, you have a sacred 
trust committed to you, in the history and 
precious memories attaching to this church of 
your fathers. Its honor, its influence, and its 
character, are now in your hands. I have but 
one prayer and exhortation : it is, that you 
may be worthy of your ancestors, and faithful 
to the work they have bequeathed you. If 
time and money and sacrifices are demanded 
of you to sustain the character and influence 
of this church, remember what your fathers 
did and suffered. If this church ever fail to 
sustain her proper share in the labors and sac- 
rifices of Christ's universal church, it will be 
because the spirit of its founders and early 
members has expired in the hearts of you, their 
children. It is not only a church honored 
with early Pilgrim memories, but it is distin- 
guished as the oldest of the churches which 
have remained steadfast in the faith of the 



27 

fathers. This church has brought clown to us 
the self-saine faith which led our fathers across 
the waters, which sustained them in their life 
of toil and endurance, and which has been the 
faith of Christ's church in all the ages of her 
recorded history. While the first church in 
Plymouth, — we say it in sorrow of heart, — 
while that ancient and venerable church of the 
Pilgrim Fathers, — while the first church in 
Salem, and, alas ! the first church in Boston, 
originally one with ours, — while these have 
surrendered the doctrine of the Trinity and its 
associated doctrines, regarded, not less by our 
fathers than by ourselves, as essential to " the 
faith once delivered to the saints," — this 
church has retained her original belief, and is 
now the oldest Orthodox Congregational Church 
in Massachusetts.* 

But, let me remind you, it will be of no avail 
that we have retained the faith of our fathers, 
if we have lost their zeal for religion. If we 
are found wanting in the spirit of self-sacrifice ; 
if we love our money and our ease and our 

* See Note B. 



28 



reputation more than Christ and his cause ; if 
we put the world before religion, and not, as 
our fathers did, religion first, and all beside 
secondary ; if, in a word, we divorce the old 
religion of the Puritan from his old life of holi- 
ness, — it would be better for us, no doubt, to 
resign our religion too ; for the principles we 
profess will only serve to make our unfaithful- 
ness the more apparent and the more sinful. 

Eemember, brethren, every sabbath, as you 
go up to the House of Gocl, that there are 
sleeping beneath your feet* the poor remains 
of men, who, when alive, burned with the zeal 
of Paul for Christ and his church. Sleep, do 
I say ? Yes ! the buried seed-principles of 
their immortal bodies do sleep ; and the eye 
of their Kedeemer, we know, has been upon 
them, and will be upon them, until they shall 
"rise, fashioned like his glorious body." But 
their spirits live ! I love to think that the 
church, of which we compose but a small part, 
are living now : they have but removed their 
relation to the church above ! There they 

* See Note C. 



29 



are, standing before the Throne, perhaps in a 
cluster by themselves. First and foremost are 
the venerable founders of the church, now 
well-read in after-histories ; and around them, 
closely gathered, are many recently gone up 
from your side, with whose faces, as with the 
love of whose hearts, you have been familiar, 
and with whom it is still among your fondest 
hopes to spend your eternity ! 

On this clay of solemn ancestral commemo- 
ration, we call to mind, with tender recol- 
lections and kindling hopes, our departed 
members, the blessed dead. We thank God 
for the comfortable doctrine of the communion 
of saints ; we are not separated from them in 
thought, in feeling, in hope, or in destiny. Nor 
are they separated from us ! Perhaps they 
linger over the spot where they worshipped 
God, and were trained for heaven. Perhaps 
they are gazing upon us, even now, with in- 
tensest interest. 

Spirits of the blest ! we will be faithful to 
your memories ; and, stimulated by your exam- 
ple, we will be faithful, in our day and genera- 



30 



tion, to the Saviour whom you served, and 
whom we also desire to serve. 

I shall be pardoned, perhaps, if I read a few 
stanzas which I received last evening. They 
are dedicated to this church by Kev. W. S. 
Studley, the Pastor of the First Methodist 
Church, and were recently composed by him, 
after a perusal of its history. 



" God hath wrought wonders in the land 
Since first our fathers, stern and brave, ■ 
A saintly, yet heroic band, — 

For freedom crossed the stormy wave ; 
And, counting all things else but loss, 
Unfurled the banner of the cross. 



Through many a day of sore distress, 
Those pilgrim-heroes, sick and faint, 

And dwelling in a wilderness, 
Gave utterance to no complaint. 

By faith they felt their Avoes relieved : 

They knew in whom they had believed. 



Trusting in Him who once had said, — 
' So shall thy strength be, as thy day,' 

Each lifted cheerfully his head, 
And went rejoicing on his way ; 

Conscious, to those whose hearts are pure, 

God's promises are ever sure. 



31 



Suck were the pilgrim-sires of old, 
Who worshipped on this sacred spot ; 

And, though two hundred years have rolled, 
Their holy deeds are not forgot : 

The fragrance of their memory still 

Lingers around dear ' Harvard Hill.' 

The sons of those old worthy sires, 
Who kept the faith 'gainst every foe, 

Still keep alive tke altar-fires 

Kindled two hundred years ago : 

Pure sacrifices still tkey bring 

To Christ, our Prophet, Priest, and King. 

God of our fathers ! let thy grace 
Not on our hearts alone distil ; 

But pour it out on all the race, 

Till men shall learn and do thy will : 

Then shall our children's children know 

And prize two hundred years ago." 



32 



NOTES 



A. 

The original Charlestown Church is now the first church in Bos- 
ton. It was formed in Charlestown, July 30, 1630, o.s. Soon 
after its formation, the members began moving across the river, 
and settling in Boston ; and, by November, the majority were 
there, and the Rev. John Wilson, their pastor, then removed like- 
wise. For two years the church embraced both sides of the river, 
and the people worshipped together in Boston. In November, 
1632, the Charlestown members, amounting to one-fourth of the 
whole number, withdrew from their brethren, and began the pre- 
sent first church of Charlestown. Some considerable discussion 
has taken place as to which of the two churches takes precedence 
in age. The truth seems to be, that the original church of 
Charlestown and Boston was regarded as common to the settlers 
on both sides of the river. But, as the majority went to Boston, 
and carried with them their church-organization, their records, 
and their pastor, and inasmuch as the Charlestown members were 
formally dismissed, there can be no doubt that the Boston church 
are the legitimate successors of the original church. 

B. 

The oldest Orthodox Congregational Church in New England is 
in Windsor, Ct. It was formed in Plymouth, Old England ; the 
members entering into a church-covenant, and choosing their 
ministers, in the beginning of 1630, before coming to this country. 
They settled in Dorchester; and, in 1636, the majority removed 
to Windsor, and began the settlement of that place. The present 
first church of Dorchester was formed, after this date, of those 
who remained. 

C. 

The hill upon which the church is situated was the burying- 
place of many of the first settlers. Our town-records say : " The 
multitude set up cottages, booths, and tents, about the Town Hill. 
They had long passage. Some of the ships were seventeen, some 
eighteen weeks a coming. Many people arrived, sick of the 
scurvy, which also increased much after their arrival, for want of 
houses, and by reason of wet lodging in their cottages. Other 
distempers also prevailed ; and although the people were gene- 
rally very loving and pitiful, yet the sickness did so prevail, that 
the whole were not able to tend the sick as they should be 
tended ; upon which many perished and died, and were buried 
about the Town Hill." 




6ur Jmitan lathers mtr §bu) : 



SERMON 



PREACHED IN 



COMMEMORATION OF THE 220TH ANNIVERSARY 



Uh' THE POUNDING OF THE 



FIRST CHURCH IN CHARLESTOWN, MASS. 



Sunday, November 14, 1852. 



BY WILLIAM I. BUDINGTON, 

l'ASTO R. 



CHARLESTOWN : 
M c K I M & CUTTER, 62, MAIN STREET, 

BOSTON: B. H. GREENE, 

124, Washington Street. 

1852. 



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